60 per cent of Kenyan banks have insecure systems.pic by Fredrick Onyango

Salim Idd, a Nairobi-based internet security expert, is increasingly worried about new developments in the virtual world of internet.

Using his personal computer located in the city centre, he casually taps his keyboard in an attempt to gain unauthorized online entry into a local bank’s database.

He flits through the back-end of the financial institution’s e-banking website, looking for a weak point that will let him access personal information of the bank’s customers.

In seconds, he has found it. It may sound like a movie script but this is the other side to internet banking that not many Kenyans are familiar with.

In the recent past banks have been boasting about their use of technology to cut costs and improve efficiency of service delivery.

But the reality is that in doing so, the majority of them end up exposing themselves to a wide range of cyber-crime, including hacking.

“Sixty per cent of our banks have insecure systems,” says Mr Idd as he probes the system using an internet connection and what he terms as ‘rudimentary’ hacking skills.

In Kenya, the recent growth of technology-based banking services has put financial institutions in the same class as mobile service providers; a prime targets for hackers.

Technology market players say hacking is expected to grow in the coming months as more businesses go online with the arrival of fibre optic internet and the high internet speeds it offers.

Internet security experts say the advent of high speed connectivity will draw the attention of international hackers who were previously put off by the amount of time it took to break into local websites using slower satellite connections.

While local hackers are also anticipated to increase their activities, the international hacker community poses the biggest threat to local business because they are more experienced and talented.

“Fibre has placed Kenya at the same level as first world economies and will certainly drive growth. But for every benefit there are risks, and at this moment the most serious threat to the economy is the lack of security online,” said Mr Idd, who is the chief technical officer at a company that undertakes security consultations for local firms.

Security analysts say Kenyan firms are not prepared for the potential security threat, especially financial institutions which present the most attractive targets due to the lure of money that can be easily siphoned from accounts.

Industry data indicates that just one out of every 20 banks in the country currently uses an email encryption service that makes their systems less vulnerable to attack.

Experts warn as the banking community drives more of its processes online, emails and related technological products will serve as the prime means of communication for money sensitive procedures such as credit card transactions, money transfers and direct debits.

This creates more avenues for hackers to gain access to personal data or access funds in online accounts.

They cite the example of a local hacker, who managed to gain entry into CDSC accounts held by one stock broker and transferred stocks between accounts without either the owner or the broker realizing during the 2008 post election violence period.

More alarmingly, lack of adequate online security procedures may expose the over seven million users of mobile money transfers platforms to fraud as their accounts become more accessible to malicious programmers. This is because the SMS functionality that drives services are not encrypted.

“Organizations need to know we are in a new era of technology and information where hacking, information leaking, and business espionage are real threats,” said John Gichuki, a security analyst at Lanet Consulting.

He advises firms to urgently undertake internal and external security assessments with the aim of realizing at least 90 per cent security.
Although many companies believe they have installed secure systems, analysts blame the lack of adequate training of most web developers for the current sorry state of business security.

Mr Idd said most programmers were being trained to focus more on the design aspect of websites rather than security — securing the most obvious areas of a site but leave gaping holes elsewhere.

According to data from global security firm Symantec, there’s an average of over 245 million attempted malicious code attacks across the globe every month.

“As malicious code continues to grow at a record pace, we’re also seeing that attackers are profiting from creating customized threats that steal confidential information, particularly bank account credentials and credit card data,” said Stephen Trilling the vice president of Symantec Security.

by Kui Kinyanjui of the Business Daily, as appeared on 13th August 2009

1. Content provider will  allow reasonable time of at least 4 working days for provisioning, testing and contract preparation.
2.  Content provider will be expected to pay an initial one-time setup fee of Ksh. 50,000 to Symbiotic Media Consortium.
3. Other Charges:- Upon connecting to Sembuse , the content provider will be required to obtain short codes which will attract a monthly rental fee of Ksh. 2,500. (Golden numbers “sweet easy to remember numbers” will attract a further one off cost of Kshs. 50,000) eg. 2222, 3355 you get the drift
4. Revenue share across all services is 40: 60 in content providers favor OR an account management fee of Ksh 30,000 Ksh

Email: business [at] symbiotic.co.ke to get connected or if you have anymore queries.

“ You’ll see a lot of YouTube and Facebook stuff now made for Africa by Africans ”
Idd Salim Symbiotic Media Consortium“

This is perfectly understandable. It costs slightly less than $1 to surf for about an hour in a cyber-cafe in Nairobi and internet connection speeds are very slow.

But he is ready to talk after he pays his bill.

“It’s not good. It’s hanging and keeps wasting time and frustrating me,” he says.

Another frustrated user complains: “I’ve spent more than 15 minutes instead of 10.”

But things are about to change for these internet users.

The Seacom undersea fibre-optic cable goes live on Thursday, promising changes that will be felt right across eastern and southern Africa.

The switch will take place simultaneously in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Maputo in Mozambique and Mtunzini in South Africa. [More...]

The switchover from relying mainly on satellites to the submarine cable is expected to massively increase connection speeds.

One of the biggest setbacks of satellite connections is that a change in weather almost always leads to unstable connectivity.

It is hoped that cyber-cafe owners will transfer the benefits to their customers, as they will be making a huge savings on international links.

“When the fibre-optic cable goes live this means the speeds will be fantastic, we’ll have a higher turnover of clients and that translates to increased income,” says Fred, a cyber-cafe manager.

These benefits will also be felt by millions of phone users, who will enjoy cheaper international connections and quicker voice transfers.

“The fibre-optic connection enables faster voice transfer unlike satellite, which has an average response time of 650 milliseconds, thus introducing some delays in our voice communication,” says Mahmoud Noor, Seacom’s cable-station manager in Mombasa.

Mr Noor says the new service will reduce this to an average of 90 milliseconds for calls between Europe and eastern Africa, and an even faster response of less than six milliseconds between Dar es Salaam and Mombasa.

Potential squandered?

In Kenya, various sectors of the economy are expecting a major boost following the launch of the undersea cable, and investors are anxious about it.

“At the Nairobi stock exchange there is a possibility that things like day-trading will be introduced, where you make an order and in two minutes you will know if it has been sold or not,” says Idd Salim of the Symbiotic Media Consortium, a software firm in Nairobi.

“That is not possible right now because you have to make an order today then wait for two or three days for it to clear.”

Mr Salim says that Africa’s potential is being hindered by the absence of fast internet connectivity and this technological advance will open new avenues.

“For instance computer programmers cannot start a video service or a powerful website because the connection is slow,” he says.

“You’ll see a lot of YouTube and Facebook stuff now made for Africa by Africans.

“Look at things like medicine – people will be able to be diagnosed from their homes because now we can have virtual hospitals.”

The use of the undersea cable is expected to be immediate, save for some ISPs (Internet Service Providers) who may want to test it within their networks for a few days first.

Last month the Teams fibre-optic cable was launched in the coastal city of Mombasa, but it has yet to go live.

as appeared on – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8163900.stm

Update: download url for the application comes from Wandflower Education, which points to adaptation or licensing of the same and not in-house dev…not that it matters.

For Ksh20, you recieve a set of questions fro all subjects with answers and explanations. For KCPE questions you have 5 sets of question papers – english, kiswahili, mathematics, social sciences and science. Three times a week (Mon,Wed and Fri) one would receive 10 questions per subject . For KCPE there will be four sets of question papers – math, chemistry, biology, and physics sent on Tue,Thur and Saturday.

How it works is that one sends the word KCPE or KCSE to the shortcode 4556 and a java application is sent to the phone.The questions then start coming in with the review answers and explanation being received later.It costs 20 shillings per download.

The billing still needs to be made clear though, because the advert says 20ksh per download. The end user, who is going to be a student on a limited budget needs to know the absolute costs of using the service. If it costs 20sh for every download (where the application pulls the content, and an MT  – mobile terminated billing message is sent ) that would add up to ksh 60 per week or ksh 240 per month. Is that pricy? I dont’ know , depends on how much you value learning on your cell I have sent a request for the application (10:18 am )but am yet to get the download link …knowing consumers in kenya, they may feel ripped off if they don’t get the content they have paid for in at most 5 minutes.

During last year M4D Workshop in Kampala Uganda, we looked at a number of initiatives that were headed in the way of mobile education. It is good to see that a large media house such as Nation sees the future and opportunities that are afforded by better handset capability, i shall not even being with the “doom and gloom” analogies that many corporates and  have towards richer mobile experiences as they are still focused on the masses…masses here defined as the rural and urban poor who number in the millions.

That begs the question as to whether the development of richer mobile experiences and content should be put on the back burner due to “small markets”. We forget that while regular sms and low handset capability may be the norm now, that will not alway be the case and organizations need to be forward thinking lest they miss the bus when it arrives, and it has arrived.

There are a number of other initiatives round the world that we could look at to measure the success and market readiness of  product such as M-masomo. Of note is the Mxit execution where government pay the learning channel costs.

Other links – http://bit.ly/19AZDP

Mxit to be used for education – Published: 4/22/2009 07:25:28

JOHANNESBURG – Controversial cellphone chat application MXit is to be used as an educational aide.
http://bit.ly/ES4Th

Two hundred and sixty Grade 10 pupils from selected schools in Gauteng, North West and Western Cape are guinea-pigging the first trial run.

The MXit/maths project Imfundo Yethu Imfundo Yami (Our Education My Education) is a joint venture between the department of education, Nokia South Africa and Safipa, a funding portal managed by the Finnish Embassy in South Africa.

It will see users receiving maths information for problem solving and allow them to share thoughts to better understand the Grade 10 maths module.

The project will carry data delivery costs and, via the technology, government will pay the learning channel costs.

MXit chief executive Herman Heunis said a special channel had been created for the tutorials.
Access to it is free for those in the pilot project.

http://bit.ly/11JQ7s
CellBook Launches World’s First Book About HIV AIDS On Mobile Phones
One of the largest social initiatives to fight HIV and AIDS ever seen in Africa, potentially reaching over 30 million mobile phone users.

http://bit.ly/2jWwr3
Mobile e-learning via phone achieves real success with the young

http://bit.ly/OmGT7
What do we know about using mobile phones in education?

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Updates

A  confirmation on the M-masomo math

One set of 50 questions equals one download. The math therefore works out this way.

• 10 questions per subject, 3 times a week
• there are 5 subjects
• 10 questions x 5 subjects x 3times a week = 150 questions per week
• at 20 shillings for a set of 50 questions
• that comes to 60 shillings per week
• 240 bob per month

I finally got the wap push to download the m-masomo at 12:35 pm http://wandflower.com/ICT/dap.jsp?id=1152&c=KCPE

It’s a remote installation file which means one cannot download it and sambaza it to their friends.Let me check it out

The festival is modelled on The Hay Festival held in the UK every May in which up to 100,000 people attend – ranging from presidents to authors to fans. The Hay Festival organises several festivals in Europe and South America.  The Storymoja Hay Festival will be an international festival held in Nairobi, organised as a partnership between Storymoja and The Hay Festival.

The event will be held in a temporary ‘tented city’ at the Impala grounds and will include a main stage for live performances and competitions, and twelve themed tents in which multiple one and a half hour-hour events will be held concurrently. The range of 100 or so events are intended to generate public debate around critical issues facing East Africa including Climate Change,  Diversity,  Microfinance, Literature, Entrepreneurship, Gender, IT,  Self-Development, Music, Film and Education. They will be headlined by star guests in each particular field.  Music (our headline act is Seckou Keita) and various competitions will ensure a mixed crowd in celebratory ambiance, and attract extensive, positive local and international media coverage.

Simply put, the Storymoja Hay Festival is a celebration of ideas expressed in many forms. It is part of a longer term campaign to get East Africa reading, writing and discussing ideas.

What are the highlights?
An array of forty plus African and international writers, thinkers, filmmakers will participate in various events at the festival including – Wole Soyinka,  Hanif Kureishi, Vikram Seth, Wangari Mathai, Kate Adie, Petina Gappah, Mukoma wa Ngugi, Monica Arac, Nick Broomfield, Jan Blake, Daniel Morden.

Who is invited (audience)?
Day-long fun for the whole family with multiple events targeting men, women and children. Programmes will be distributed with tickets.

Where and when?
Venue:   Impala Club, Ngong Road, Nairobi
Dates:  Friday 31st July, Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd August, 2009.

Event Schedule
The session on Mentoring is scheduled for Saturday 1st August 4pm-5:30pm in the Enterprise Arena. Feel free to involve Vital Voices and or any partners you think might add value to the event.

What is the purpose of the Storymoja Hay Festival?
The festival hopes to encourage Africans to ‘own’ their problems by exploring our situations/stories, and search for solutions by generating platforms for discussion and debate. To achieve our 2030 vision, we need to read widely, discuss ideas, and exploit our diversity of stories/backgrounds for nation building.

Who are Storymoja?
Storymoja is a publishing company formed by five writers committed to spreading the gospel of reading, writing and thinking has held two previous annual festivals to promote books – dubbed Storymoja Nyamachoma Fiesta. The 2008 event attracted 2200 people. The 2009 Storymoja Hay Festival will utilise and build on that experience, and is the next step in achieving our Storymoja mission of getting ‘A book in every hand.’

Erik has been getting a number of emails lately asking him to connect people in the US, Europe or large organizations in Africa with local (as in “in-Africa”) talent. They’re usually interested in finding a knowledgeable designer, a good blogger or editor, and has had quite a few people ask him to put them in touch with programmers.

The White African Job Board

At this time, it’s a simple and free place to post jobs for African technology professionals. Looking forward to seeing are opportunities listed specifically for people in Africa. That last bit is important, it’s for African devs, designers and bloggers.

A lot of these might be for short-term gigs and volunteer opportunities, but who knows… It’s a little bit of an experiment for Erik, so no promises on his part . If it proves popular and useful he may keep it around. Oh, he has the final say on what jobs go live too, so be forewarned. Think of Erik as the curator and friendly job board dictator…

Make sure you grab the news feed, so you don’t have to keep going to see what’s new. If you are a potential employer /  have a job or looking to get work  take a look at the tips page – think about how you’ll deal with project scope, as well as how to pay, or be paid.

Real Job Boards Around Africa

There are some real job boards around the continent that are worth keeping in mind. Here are a couple of them (leave links others that I missed in the comments area):

Kazinow
Find a Job in Africa
Job Space – South Africa
Best Jobs - South Africa
Zebra Jobs
Sama Source – Outsourcing to Africa

Further Thoughts on Outsourcing Tech Work to Africa

It’s an encouraging sign that there are a lot of people interested in finding local African talent. What Eric found in his travels, and in talking to technologists around the continent, is that though there are more devs and designers each year, the number of top quality ones available for work are few.

One cautionary piece of advice though… and it pains me to say this. A few of the African developers that I have come across are not time-conscious and they can come across like their client/project is not as important to them as you would find in their counterparts in the West. Of course, this means if you are timely and fulfill your responsibilities you will find clients lined up 10 deep to get to you – you’re a rare commodity.

African developers are quickly going to learn that they’re on the global stage now, and there’s nothing stopping their clients from switching to someone more reliable, even if it’s a country or continent away.

The good news from Bwana Eric though is that of the many devs  that he has met, many are as good as any you’ll find anywhere else in the world. A few of them are on par with the best I’ve come across anywhere.

re-purposed from whiteafrican

Now to track them down and get their stories…done during the 20% hours we will need your help…any guys doing great work that you know of or would like to know more about…just drop us a note.

It is great to finally have EasyHisa out. Standard Investment Bank have come out strongly as being forward thinking and early adopters….but most importantly I commend their support of  local talent and competence…they did not import technology from outside our borders but chose to engage local qualified companies and individuals  such as ourselves to make the product a success.

Time and again at different forums I advocate for firms to engage local developers to develop the industry as well as set Kenya apart in the African region for software development.

More importantly, the current extensions under development will see the stock trading business overhauled yet again with real-time bank account access and plugin to all major available money transfer services to allow investors take full advantage of real- time information and trading.

Here is an excerpt from SIB chairman’s speech, more pictures and video to come…

Every few years, there is a leap in technology that changes how we do our work, how we invest or how we live our lives. The cellphone changed our lives in ways we never imagined. In the Capital markets there was the Central Depository System and the Automated Trading System, which improved the efficiency of the trading cycle from weeks to 5 days. The wide area network further enabled stockbrokers to trade from the comfort of their offices.

We need to keep our market intadem with the innovations coming through information technology.

We introduce EasyHisa, as the next leap in technology that will change how we trade on the Nairobi Stock Exchange once again. This is an important milestone in our Capital Markets.

Easy Hisa is a new sms service from Standard Investment Bank that allows an investor to rade shares from the comfort of their home or office. The service is so efficient that certain paribus, an order sent is processed and delivered to the exchange within one hour.

Let us ask ourselves, how much it costs to trade on the exchange currently?  Along with the commission to the Stock broker there are other extra costs to you the investor.

There is the cost of transportation in which our customers, through our research, have informed us to be between KShs 100 and KShs 1,000.

There is the cost of time away from your employment, business or family.  A lot of customers cannot leave their employment or business during the week and sacrifice instead to come in on Saturday when they could have been taking care of other personal matters.

The third is the cost of opportunity.  This cost, suffered by some investors, is one that is very important when trading in shares.  Profits that you could have made may be lost if you cannot trade instantly.

With Easy Hisa these extra costs are greatly reduced or eliminated altogether.

For instance, remember that Safaricom went as high as Kshs 7.80 before going down to the current prices we see today, Now imagine that a simple SMS would have enabled you to lock in such a profit as you continue with your day to day business.  That is why you must have Easy Hisa today.

This service enables you to, among other things, place orders, check the balance in your account or the value of your shares and even hold an order if the price has moved in a way you did not expect.  As you can see, there is true control over your shares with this service.

In conclusion, our esteemed customers continuously call for us to improve our service beyond their expectations and we continue to accept the challenge.

The Chairman of the Capital Markets Authority, Mr Cheserem during the University challenge, also asked the industry to face up to this challenge and offer mobile trading among other services and therefore this Launch of the SMS trading is also an answer to that call.

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Easy Hisa,

Trade shares anytime anywhere via SMS.

Maker Faire Africa asks the question, “What happens when you put the drivers of ingenious concepts from Mali with those from Ghana and Kenya, and add resources to the mix?”

Maker Faire Africa will engage on-the-ground breakthrough organizations like Ashesi University and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology to sharpen focus on locally-generated, bottom-up prototypes of technologies that solve immediate challenges to development. Specifically, Maker Faire Africa will take an approach that will achieve three principal aims:

• Brighten the light on local examples of the “fabrication” ethos
• Provide mechanisms to incubate these innovators and their products to a point where they can be taken to market
• Connect refined plans to disseminate innovations with venture finance

The aim is to identify, spur and support local innovation. At the same time, Maker Faire Africa would seek to imbue creative types in science and technology with an appreciation of fabrication and by default manufacturing. The long-term interest here is to cultivate an endogenous manufacturing base that supplies innovative products in response to market needs.

Background
When discussions of wealth creation and poverty reduction are made in reference to the continent, for a variety of reasons manufacturing is left off the table. This is partly the fault of education and or orientation. Making fabrication the next “big thing” in a sense could go some way in changing these attitudes. Manufacture – literally, fabrication by hand – is exciting, and exists across the continent of Africa, and is abundant – from centers sited at dumps, where scrap metals are abundant, to more formal collections of mechanics and repairers who have set up shop in the urban core. Much of this curiosity, talent, and entrepreneurial spirit in manufacturing remains trapped in the in